Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America (Chicago Lives) Review

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Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America (Chicago Lives) ReviewHard to believe that someone who served in FDR's War Cabinet might still be alive, but here he is, wry, taciturn, often funny, and still full of vigor at age 90 something. With Steve Hundley, Truman Gibson has written a brutal, no holds barred account of his first fifty years on this planet, and it will take the tar right off of your shingles. Gibson was there, and he brings many scenes to life, and he remembers everything, from growing up in Atlanta and having his mother, an upright character, give the mannered WEB DuBois a taste of his own medicine. He would come to call on the Gibson family and expect to be treated like some sort of potentate. Well, Alberta Dickerson Gibson was having none of that! In her house, he'd be treated just like any other respected guest, but certainly no one would be doing any kowtowing to him.
The family moved to Columbus when Truman and his brother, Harry when small. Imagine having two boys named Harry and Truman! And Truman was to have many close enclunters with HARRY TRUMAN later in life. From Columbus, where young Gibson first encountered race prejudice, and incidentally saw his first snowfall, it was but a hop, skip and a jump to Chicago, the so-called "black metropolis," which was to be his home base for the rest of his career. He met everyone worth knowing in Chicago, and by the time the 30s had come around, he was put in charge of many details of the important American Negro Exposition--the first black World's Fair. Now, this is one World's Fair which you never hear about any more, I wonder why, because as Gibson paints it, it was the spectacle to top all spectacles, involving Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Jacob Lawrence, and so many more great black figures. The next step for Gibson was throwing his lot behind the cause of the Negro soldier in WWII.
Some have criticized him as an "Uncle Tom" who made his way into the big leagues by kissing up to the white man and making nice. I get furious when I hear people say that, for as this book proves, Gibson fought every battle from the street up. Disgustingly, the Army kept colored and white troops segregated during the war, and in the Air Force, white pilots refused to fly planes that had been serviced by black mechanics. Amazing Eleanor Roosevelt responded by requesting black pilots for all her succeeding flights, showing the world that whatever white people could do, black people could do just as well. It's not just sturm und drang either in this exciting volume. There are some spots of humor too, for Gibson knew many fascinating characters right out of the pages of Damon Runyon. One time he went to Italy where he encountered the "old world" custom, the toilet a hole in the ground but a sophisticated contraption he couldn't figure out what it was for. Finally, a wiser man told him, Truman, that's a bidet.
Gibson nearly came a cropper as the spokesman for the International Boxing Council. I won't spoil the story for you, but if Martin Scorcese should ever make a sequel to RAGING BULL, he should run, don't walk, to the pages of KNOCKING DOWN BARRIERS where scene after scene rival the best boxing writing ever put to paper.Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America (Chicago Lives) Overview

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